


Agni

by AllegoriesInMediasRes



Series: Mahabharata fics [14]
Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Compass Rose Meme, Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-27 07:49:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16214648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/pseuds/AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: Draupadi & Shikhandi, for the Compass Rose meme.Title means “fire”.





	Agni

**Author's Note:**

  * For [avani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avani/gifts).



**North**

first encounter | (turnabout is) fair play | fool’s gold | forbidden fruit |  **the female of the species is more deadly than the male**

Shikhandi comes to see her, briefly, after the vastraharan, before they leave for exile.

“There’s something to be said for killing myself and becoming a man,” Draupadi says in a low voice, in between bidding her goodbyes to her weeping children. Queen Subhadra has taken over for the moment, allowing them a moment’s privacy. “When no one else will defend your honor, sometimes you simply have to defend it yourself.”

“And would you have enough patience, sister,” Shikhandi says with a smile, “to wait another lifetime? Patience has never been your strong suit.”

“No,” Draupadi agrees cheerfully. She passes a hand through the mane that has already become an ants’ nest. What will it look like, Shikhandi wonders, after thirteen years in the forest?

**South**

(cold) comfort | confession | cloak and dagger |  crocodile tears |  **charmed life**

“And that snake Shakuni!” Draupadi snaps. “Yudhisthir knew he taught Duryodhan how to cheat at dice, and yet submitted to another game, all for the sake of honor.”

“He was my friend, once,” Shikhandi says.

“Shakuni,” he elaborates when Draupadi is confused. “When I was Amba. After Bhishma rejected me, I found myself in Gandhara. We were… close for a time. Until the blind king came for Gandhari’s hand -- she was Pritha then… Shakuni then vowed he would destroy the Kuru clan, for what it had done to me, and to his sister.”

“How fate turns and twists,” Draupadi muses. “In your previous life, you were my great-aunt-in-law, and your friend the architect of my misery. In this life, we are brothers. In the next life… what will we be?”

**East**

stars | songs and stories | (politics/misery makes for) strange bedfellows |  **silver lining** | sea change

“A wise man once told me that seeking revenge is like drinking poison,” Shikhandi says. 

“An entire sabha of wise men once told me that there is honor in allowing a woman to be dragged and stripped naked before all,” Draupadi counters. “And in any case, I was born from the fires of vengeance. And did you not throw yourself into one, so that you might destroy a wise old man?”

“He was not so old then,” Shikhandi says, the countenance of his mortal enemy still clear in his mind. Those sharp-hewn features; has age dulled them? Those thick locks escaping under his helmet; are they now lined with silver? Those arms that dragged her (Shikhandi was  _ her _ then) away at her swayamvar; do they falter now?

It makes no difference to him; no matter how old Gangaputra gets, Shikhandi will see him destroyed. 

**West**

just in time | joined at the hip |  **jam tomorrow** | juvenile | journey’s end

Draupadi thought her brother would be happy when Bhishma finally falls upon his bed of arrows, yet all Shikhandi tastes is bitter, bitter anger. “Even at the last, he refused to fight me because I was a woman. We were all women in some past life! I earned my status as a man, and yet it always goes back to being Amba!” he seethes, and Draupadi says nothing, only allowing the words to fall out. 

Draupadi thins she can understand. Bhishma is defeated, but the means by which Sikandhi’s vow has been fulfilled leaves a hollow taste. All those dreams of glory and victory -- and yet it comes to such manipulation. 

(Will it feel this way when the war is over, and she finally bathes her hair in Kaurava blood?)

(It does, when Ashwathama’s curse rocks the earth and she looks upon the Pandava camp, blood staining the earth and smoke curling into the sky.)


End file.
